User:Arianit/Gani Jakupi

Gani Jakupi, born in 1956 in Kosovo, is a Kosovar-Albanian cartoonist and comic book writer, journalist, and Jazz composer.

Biography
Gani Jakupi, born in Kosovo in 1956, published his first comic at the age of 13, in a regional Albanian-language magazine. At 17, he published in newspapers and magazines in most of the republics that made up Yugoslavia.

At the end of the 1970s, he arrived in Paris, placed his drawings in humorous magazines and some comics in fanzines. He settles in Paris. Three volumes from the Matador series, on a screenplay by Jakupi and with a drawing by Labiano, appeared between 1991 and 1994 by Glénat. Once the series ended, Jakupi moved to Barcelona, Spain, and gradually left comics. He works in illustration, design, translation (among others, works by Danilo Kiš or Quim Monzó ) or journalism. After publishing a few short stories, he wrote a thriller, Día de gracia (SIMS, 2001), and edited political analysis texts (Un paréntesis en el silencio ). That same year, he composed the soundtrack for a short documentary accompanying the exhibition "Tiran(i)a" in the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona.

In 2005, he organized a collection of books – records for a Barcelona publisher, on sometimes forgotten personalities of jazz and popular music. Futuroplis published his The Invisible King in 2009. The album won the Brick d'Or at the Toulouse Festival. This was followed by Les amants de Sylvia (Futuropolis, 2010) and The last image (Collection Noctambule, 2012), nominated for the Prix France Info and the Prix Médecins sans frontières. He adapted his detective story previously published in Spanish, under the title Jour de Grâce, with Marc N'Guessan drawing (Dupuis, 2010) into a comic strip.

In 2010, in Douai, boards from the Invisible King were exhibited alongside those produced by Henri Matisse for his book Jazz (1947).

In 2014, his Retour au Kosovo, designed by Jorge González, appeared in the Aire Libre collection (Dupuis). This graphic novel which describes the first post-war months in Kosovo wins the special jury prize at Romics (Rome International Comic Festival) 2015 and that of the Cognito foundation at the Brussels book fair, also in 2015. In the spring 2016 issue, the journal XXI publishes its graphic story Havana, USA, a report on the Cuban community in Miami.

In 2006, while searching for documentation for a comic book on Benny Moré, Jakupi came across a photo that sparked his curiosity : it depicts a North American guerrilla in Cuba. More than twelve years later, his graphic novel El Comandante Yankee (Aire Libre, 2019) and his historical essay Enquête sur El Comandante Yankee (La Table Ronde, 2019) tackle a little-known aspect of the Cuban revolution. In November 1957, in parallel with Fidel Castro, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, son of Spanish Republican refugees, established the "Segundo Frente Nacional de l'Escambray", a second rebel army which fought the dictator Batista. One of Menoyo's officers was William Alexander Morgan, a former US soldier, known by the nickname of Commander Yankee. Adored as heroes, Morgan and Menoyo were then ousted by Castro, and their very existence obscured. Jakupi made three trips to Cuba, two to Miami, obtained documents and manuscripts like Menoyo's memoirs, campaign diaries from various rebel officers, orders of wars and passes, browsed publications from the period, consulted various works and carried out interviews with twenty characters of this forgotten epic. Jakupi has also been entrusted with a large quantity of photographs from private collections. El Comandante Yankee is a "river graphic novel" (224 pages in large format) which, among other things, depicts the conflict of the various rebel factions for the seizure of power after the escape of the dictator, as well as the role of the United States in these stratagems.

In parallel with his Gani Jakupi Connections, he published the album Aldea, which brings together a total of 17 musicians from different backgrounds and cultures: Kosovo, Spain, France, Switzerland, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, Moldova, etc. In this first CD, Jakupi limits himself to composing, arranging and producing all the material, but takes again the guitar for the following project, while recomposing the formation, in order to introduce a bandoneon and a cello, among others. The result was the album Kismet, released in 2014. The Connections performed on stage for the first time in Albania, Tirana and Shkodra, and then sold out at the Barcelona Jamboree and at the Éclats d'Émail festival in Limoges.

As a screenwriter, he prepares Sertão, or the end of time (Dargaud), with Marc N'Guessan drawing, and co-written with Denis Lapière Barcelona!, drawn by Ruben Pellejero and Eduard Torrents (Dupuis, Aire Libre collection).

Jakupi's works have been published in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, English, Russian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian and Albanian. In 2013, the publishing house KOHA (Kosovo) translated The Last Image (Imazhi i fundit) which thus became the first comic book album ever published in Albanian. The Greek cultural association “To Kafeneio ton Ideon” (under the high patronage of UNESCO) awarded to Gani Jakupi, for the entire work, the “Alexander the Great” prize (previously awarded to personalities such as Melina Mercouri or Jack Lang).

In 2019, Jakupi makes his old dream come true: a comic book festival in his homeland. GRAN Fest hits hard from its first edition, with guests like Hermann, Frank Margerin, Dave McKean, Marcello Quinatanilla or Fumio Obata. Immediately integrated by the French Ministry of Culture into the BD 2020 network (which will become BD 20/21), the festival marks a pause forced by the pandemic, and recurs in 2021, highlighting women authors, with Judith Vanistedael, Aude Mermilliud, Edith Grattery and Lili Sohn.

Comic books

 * El Comandante Yankee, screenplay and drawing by Gani Jakupi, Dupuis, Aire Libre collection, 2019 ISBN 978-2-800-15200-4
 * Return to Kosovo, screenplay by Gani Jakupi, drawings by Jorge González, Dupuis, Aire Libre collection, 2014 ISBN 978-2-800-15626-2
 * The last image, screenplay and drawings by Gani Jakupi, Soleil Productions, Noctambule collection, 2012 ISBN 978-2-302-02062-7
 * Les amants de Sylvia, screenplay and drawings by Gani Jakupi, Futuropolis, 2010 ISBN 978-2-7548-0304-5
 * Day of Grace, screenplay by Gani Jakupi, drawings by Marc N'Guessan, Dupuis, General Public collection, 2010 ISBN 978-2-8001-4650-8
 * The Invisible King, screenplay and drawings by Gani Jakupi, Futuropolis, 2009 ISBN 978-2-7548-0206-2
 * Blues dans le noir, in the CD-book "Montoliu plays Tete", script and drawings by Gani Jakupi, DiscMedi, 2005
 * Matador, screenplay by Gani Jakupi, drawings by Hugues Labiano, Glénat, graphic collection
 * 1) Lune Gitane, 1992 ISBN 2-7234-1399-3
 * 2) La Part du feu, 1993 ISBN 2-7234-1601-1
 * 3) L'Orgueilleux, 1994 ISBN 2-7234-1725-5

Historical essays

 * Investigation of El Comandante Yankee: Another Story of the Cuban Revolution, by Gani Jakupi, La Table Ronde, 2019 ISBN 978-2-710-38758-9

Music

 * Gani Jakupi Connections Aldea, 2012
 * Gani Jakupi Connections Kismet, 2014